The United States another other governments require that certain information be reported in an effort to thwart terrorism and other criminal activities. In the United States, the law requires that each person engaged in a trade or business who, in the course of that trade or business, receives more than $10,000 in cash in one transaction or in two or more related transactions, file a Form 8300. The form is filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). Any transactions conducted between a payer (or its agent) and the recipient in a 24-hour period are considered to be related transactions. Transactions may be related even if they occur over a period of more than 24 hours if the recipient knows, or has reason to know, that each transaction is one of a series of connected transactions.
Accordingly, financial institutions are required to monitor cash and cash equivalent remittances that aggregate up to $10,000. Because financial institutions may receive payment remittances in the form of personal checks or cash equivalents, such as money orders, traveler checks, etc., which share common physical features as personal checks, it is difficult to automate a process to differentiate between cash equivalent payments and personal check payments. The effect is that analysts monitor payment activity and may review each and every account that aggregates up to $10,000 in remittances. Because a very large percentage of the $10,000 aggregate alerts are false positives, this leads to a waste of resources and creates unnecessary work for the analysts.